Constitution For Dummies - Part 1

 

So here begins my series I will call Constitution for Dummies – Part 1.  This issue has been percolating for years really, but Bloomberg and his anti-constitution buddies really have my undies in a wad.  It really is maddening to watch politicians raise their hand and swear to defend and uphold the constitution and then in the next breath as soon as their hand drops to diligently attack and erode those parts that their left-wing sensibilities despise.  It is just as maddening to see these

idiots out there who support such duplicity as long as these duplicitous traitors only go after the parts of the constitution they also disagree with.  They are really just like the guy who buys hot goodies from the local thief, but then are outraged when their home is burglarized.  So let’s talk about those enemies – foreign and domestic, especially those domestic, who I also raised my hand and swore to defend the constitution from. And unlike Mayor Bloomberg and his ilk, I meant what I said.

So you have a part of the constitution that the guys who wrote the document considered paramount. They went on at length to express that without this right, all others would fall.  This of course was the right to keep and bear arms.  So now the gun-grabbers like to say, “No that was only for the militia.” Well who exactly were the militia anyway, and who were they using their guns to fight against? Were they just a bunch of hunters worried about hordes of deer and bears kicking in their doors in the middle of the night and confiscating their guns? No. These were the same people decried today by the establishment as a bunch of inbred hillbilly redneck imbeciles with their own strange radical views of limiting the governments control over their personal lives.  The only difference between those then and those of today is that those won their war and history then went on to re-write these once outcasts as the heroes. And the same people that told them to just shut up and follow the oppressive rules then slapped them on the back with newfound camaraderie with the old “aw shucks, we were with you all along!” And of course the more things change the more they stay the same.  No these were not hunters with deer rifles.  These were not the National Guard. These were in fact, average Joes fighting against, and killing the “National Guard” troops.  These were guys fighting against the army of the long established government.  The right they were so adamant about was to keep their guns to defend solely against government oppression or others who would do them harm.   The right they were so adamant about was the right to be free from the government confiscating their weapons so as to render the common citizen less able to defend against their arbitrary will. And the weapons they meant were the most effective weapons they could acquire for killing as many government troops or others intent on taking their rights as was possible with “modern weaponry.” I think it safe to say that if George Washington had them available he would have armed every one of his rag-tag “anti-government” troops with “fully automatic assault rifles with high capacity magazines,” because as John Dillinger realized early on, the trick was to have more bullets heading away from you then toward you.  The gun was clearly the last – best hope those guys that penned the constitution saw for defending all of those other rights penned therein from those who would try to take them, either in or outside the government.  So am I advocating armed insurrection?  Let me as both Mr. Nixon and Mr. Obama are so fond of saying, be perfectly clear: I am in no way saying or implying so.  I am most strenuously and vehemently against it.  I think there are far too many mechanisms in place to keep our government in check without violence to warrant or necessitate violence.  I believe the government would necessarily go very very far in oppressing its citizens before such action were warranted. Unlike Thomas Jefferson I abhor the thought of bloody insurrection every 20 years, or every 100, or even every 500.  The point here however is to put to rest that ridiculous assertion that the 2^nd amendment was only meant to arm the national troops which are already inherently armed without such constitutional mandate. I mean, c’mon guys are we really so obtuse that we need a constitutional amendment to make sure our soldiers have guns?
 
If I hear one more time the phrase “Gun Show Loophole” I am just gonna, I dunno…  Could you idiots Please, please, just stop thinking in bumper sticker for just a moment and really use your brain for something other than remembering to breath and memorizing slogans?  So here it is, as simply as I can articulate it for those logically-challenged amongst us, otherwise known as Liberals or Progressives: The right to “Keep and bear arms” is a right, not a privilege. The Constitution does not give us this right. The right exists inherently due to the simple facts that we are breathing, and we are Citizens. The Constitution actually does not even apply and is not addressed to the citizen. What it does is it limits the governments right to infringe or attempt to take away this right or otherwise render it void. Now of course as the courts have found myriad times since the constitutions inception there are limitations to virtually every right as government must intrude sometimes upon our rights to protect us and all of our aggregate rights.  The idea of those creating such government was a balancing act with only that slightest government power to intrude in doing so as was absolutely necessary to achieve such ends.

So what is the then, dare I say it? “Gun Show Loophole.”  Well since we have a “Right to keep and bear arms” that obviously includes a “Right” to obtain those guns somehow. It means we have the right to make them and to buy and sell them from and to each other. After all they do not magically fall from the sky, and not all of us have the prerequisite skills to manufacture such a complex and technical thing as a gun.  So people manufactured and sold guns with little governmental intrusion for a couple hundred years now.  But lately the government has found amazingly broad powers and ways to meddle and “protect us” in ways the constitution never ever contemplated. So how did they do this? Well the Loophole the government found to circumvent its constitutional limitations was the wondrous thing called the Commerce Clause.  You see the founders realized that an arbitrator was needed to keep the states from arbitrarily taxing out of state goods so as to give their own states businesses and industries unfair and insurmountable advantages.  This was a very good thing, and leveled the playing field so that for instance, states with ports could not get imported goods at a low taxed rate and then jack the rates oppressively before selling the goods to their neighbors without such sea-ports.  Well some clever and enterprising person in government a while back put forth the new and novel idea that any time anything of any financial value whatsoever happened between states it then created a federal power to intervene and control that “Interstate Commerce.”  So if the slightest part of your product or even the process of manufacture could be shown to have been made in one state and crossed a state line such product or activity was now magically and wondrously “Interstate Commerce.” So voila, if the drinking water in the fountain in the break room at your gun manufacturing plant flowed downstream from the neighboring state, or the oil used in your delivery trucks came from say, the middle east, etc., etc., etc., you are engaged in interstate commerce.  How cool is that?  Likewise if you make a gun in Tennessee and ship it to Ohio – Yep, Interstate Commerce.  So that is why gun manufacturers no longer have the “Right” to sell guns to you and I.  They are now engaged in “Interstate Commerce,” and that is not a Right, but a “Privilege,” and can thus be tightly controlled and regulated under the Commerce Clause.

So what about you selling your gun to me, or visa versa? Well, the governmental nannies have tried this same Commerce Clause ruse for this but have thus far been thwarted as the judiciary has been shown not even the slightest evidence necessary to call a sale of a product between two private citizens in the same state “Interstate Commerce.”  Indeed the courts cannot separate out this product even with the extraordinary agenda driven pressure to do so.  Clearly if an individual selling this product to another in the same state is “Interstate Commerce” there is virtually no limit to what the government can find an excuse to regulate between private citizens on some pretense or another. That is not to say they do not diligently continue to try it.

So why if it is a “Right” do we need a license to buy a gun?  Put simply you don’t. I can sell you my gun, and you can sell me your gun on a handshake with no paperwork whatsoever just as I may sell you my old television or tennis racket. Likewise with your carving knife or baseball bat (Lethal weapons.). That is because it is a right. It is not a privilege. We do not need government permission, or “license” to do so.

So why then must licensed gun-dealers require me to do a background check and get a license before selling me a gun?  This is because gun manufacturers and gun dealers are not a private citizen. They are a licensed business engaged in the federally granted “Privilege” of making or selling guns under the strict controls of the Commerce Clause. The gun manufacturers use parts from many states and then sell and distribute them to other states.  Part of the strict control of this is that they must only sell their product to federally licensed dealers that are also tightly controlled under the Commerce Clause. These in turn are told that they can only sell their product to those that meet certain licensing guidelines. You see the license does not really give you a right to purchase the gun, but rather it gives them the “privilege” of selling it to you.

So you can sell me your gun, or I can sell you mine with virtually no government intrusion. This is not an absolute right however. We can keep these arms, and we may bear them(carry it with us). We may use it to defend against threats to our lives, safety or property. We cannot however randomly shoot in whatever direction we wish or into a crowd for kicks or for Allah.  We also cannot sell it to someone that we know or reasonably believe has lost their right to keep and bear arms, such as a felon, or someone who may reasonably be a danger to themselves or others in obtaining such a weapon, such as a drug addict or a crazy person.  This is a very reasonable and minimal government intrusion on this otherwise sacrosanct right.

 So that brings us to where we may transact this private sale by right.  Well, that is very clear as well.  You may sell me your gun in your living room, bedroom, den, your car or mine, in any private property. As Dr. Seuss would probably say: “You can sell it while on a boat or on a goat, in a town, or dressed as a clown.”  And yes, you may sell it in the most obvious place to buy or sell your gun: a gun show that has the sole purpose of bringing together those who wish to sell and those who want to buy this constitutionally protected product. In reality the only place you cannot sell a gun without prior permission is on public property or right of way, and not because of the gun issue but rather because it is virtually illegal to sell so much as a stick of gum on public property without a business license and oodles of “helpful” government oversight and regulation.  So for those of you about to say “Aha – many gun shows are at public fairs and other public property” – The public facilities are rented by private Licensed companies for the purpose of facilitating sales of legal items just as a flea market do.  Invariably these groups are such as Washington Arms Collectors, Ohio Arms Collectors, etc., which often have more stringent requirements over gun purchasers than the federal government. And regardless of this, such rental of government facilities does not magically render such transactions Interstate Commerce.

So the “Gun-Show loophole” is actually just one of our most simple and sacrosanct rights in action as guaranteed and protected by the constitution, and the lefties just despise it.  So they try to paint it as an absurd, obscene, and dangerous variance from the intent of the creators of the second amendment.  Nothing could really be farther from the truth. It is really one of the last vestiges of real protection under that amendment, and one that the anti-constitutionalists are determined to whittle away at or work around one way or another. And we underestimate their diligence and patience at our peril.

And to those who question the relevance or foresight of the authors of that amendment as naïve to the complexities of our world now some 200 years later why do you think they felt the need to put in stone as it will our right to buy, sell, keep and bear our arms?  Why only this? Why did they not feel compelled to specifically protect our right to keep and use wagons or desk lamps?  Perhaps they were more wise and prophetic than the left would want us to believe.  Perhaps they knew all too well what the one thing that the ignorant, the misguided well-meaning buttinskis, and the unscrupulous would most passionately endeavor to take from us.